The Perfect Royal Mistress, Page 4

  “I’m now a proper orange girl inside the King’s Theater.” She was preening, sitting up a little straighter. “In a month’s time, I’ll be the best bloody orange seller Moll has ever employed, I’ll warrant ye! Most of this is tips. As long as we give ’er the profit, the tips are ours to keep, whatever we’re clever enough to earn.”

  “Knowin’ you, Nelly Gwynne, that could end up bein’ a small fortune indeed!”

  Nell stroked the side of her sister’s face, and Rose grimaced a little when she touched the bruise there. “You’ve always believed in me, Rose, always loved me, and always taken care of me. Now its my turn. Oh, and I nearly forgot!” she said, lunging for the dress lying in a fabric pool near the door. Rose gasped when she realized what it was, then her eyes filled with tears.

  “’Tis the color of roses,” Nell said proudly. “Just like your name.”

  “You shouldn’t ’ave spent your money on me.”

  “Our money. And I cannot think of anythin’, or anyone, better to spend it on.”

  Women swirled past her, cloaked in dark velvet to conceal their identities, and vizards to hide their well-known faces so that they could do as they pleased. Dandies were in their lace and jewelry in a select area of the pit called Fops Corner. They preened and strutted up and down the narrow, overpacked isles, crushing orange peels under their elegant shoe heels, holding snuffboxes and pomanders stuffed with fragrant cloves. The aroma of cooked food mingled with perfume, with the rank stench of body odor, and from those who had relieved themselves in the corners. Nell gripped the basket of fruit with determination, and smiled broadly. She loved it all. Just then, an excited call came from beyond the doors.

  “The king comes! The king! The king is coming to see the play!”

  All around her, patrons began making way for the great royal party that approached. Nell’s heart rocked in her chest. She might actually catch a glimpse of the king!

  The swell of the crowd pushed her back as His Majesty’s party drew nearer, but Nell resisted, remaining close enough to the front of the crowd to see fine quilted silk coats, jewels, heeled shoes, and plumed hats approach her. Women in bright scarlet, emerald, and sapphire, all of them laughing and glittering like jewels in the sunlight; most prominent among them was a striking golden-haired woman. She breezed past Nell in a swirl of champagne-colored velvet, bell sleeves edged with fur and studded with tiny pearls. Her rosewater perfume held the air for an instant and then, as she did, faded into a rumble of excited chatter and gossip.

  The woman was his mistress, without a doubt.

  She was grand and breathtaking.

  And then, finally, Nell caught a glimpse of him in a coat of lavish emerald brocade and wearing a shining onyx-colored periwig. He was surrounded by others, but he was taller and more magnificent. Yet there was something more; he looked, in that brief instant as he passed her, familiar. Impossible, she thought as the royal party rounded the corner and began their ascent of the staircase that led to the king’s box. She had never been closer to Whitehall Palace than Charing Cross.

  After they had gone, the crowd dispersed, returning to their places in the pit. The spectacular moment vanished. But throughout the play, Nell could not stop herself from gazing up at the royal box from the dark of the alcove shadows, hiding her beneath the gallery. How could the king of England seem familiar?

  He watched her with interest from behind the side curtain, the length of velvet tightly in his hand as she stood in the shadows, gazing up at the king. New blood, he thought with a smile. But he would need to tread cautiously. His reputation would likely precede him.

  “Mr. Hart!” a voice called. “Five minutes until you’re onstage, sir!”

  “Thank you, Bell,” he replied, using his best verbal flourish, the one that had made him a star.

  By the end of November, Nell had developed a regular following of customers. They bought her fruit, tipped her handsomely, and engaged her in the witty banter at which she excelled well above the other girls. They found her funny without being boorish, flirtatious without being crude, and the men loved it. One of her most ardent customers, one who always bought the quince pies, was Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst.

  Buckhurst was kind, handsome and, since her very first day, an exceedingly generous tipper, often giving her more on the side than what he paid for her fare. “If it isn’t lovely Nell!” he called out to her early one Saturday afternoon as people were clambering around her for seats.

  As always, it was a pushing, shoving maelstrom for places on the pit benches.

  Nell spun around, knowing the voice now. He seemed, she thought, a friend. “Your Lordship’s usual?”

  “Am I really so predictable?” he sighed dramatically.

  “Afraid so.”

  “Have I nothing then at all of the mystery to challenge you?”

  Her robust laugh was as distinctive as it was endearing. “Certainly a fine, high manner, Lord Buckhurst. But mystery, with you, I’m afraid, is in short supply.”

  “Oh, you wound me!” He pressed his hands to his chest in a gesture befitting one of the actors they were about to see onstage.

  “An orange girl could do no such thing to a man of consequence.”

  “She could if her name was Nell Gwynne!” he parried as she simultaneously sold one orange each to two plain-faced women standing before her, hands extended. “And trust me, Nell, I am worth far less consequence than it may seem.”

  “Lord Buckhurst!” one of the women sniffed. “Pray, do not tell me a man of your stature would tarry with an orange wench!”

  Buckhurst glanced at Nell. He was wearing his endearing grin. “I’d not dream of it, Lady Penelope. But then there is little I would dream of telling you. Our conversations have always been something more of a nightmare.”

  Nell put a hand before her mouth, but not before a laugh burst past it. She felt a hand press firmly onto her shoulder. The face that met hers, when she turned around, was long and thin with a square jaw and patrician nose. “If old Moll’s most popular orange seller has an orange left, I should like to buy it,” he said to her in a deeply cultured voice.

  “Indeed I do, sir.”

  After he took the orange, he handed her coins, which amounted to an excessively large tip. “I thank you, sir. ’Tis right generous of you.”

  “Worry not. I always get what I pay for, Nell.”

  When he had gone, Lord Buckhurst asked her, “Have you any idea who that was?”

  “Not a clue. Should I?”

  “Charles Hart is the star of this theater, and one of its principal managers. And, if I may say, he has clearly taken a fancy to you.”

  “Oh, everyone fancies me, Lord Buckhurst. The same way they do a pup in the street. I get a moment’s notice for a clever tongue and a smile, then no more.”

  “Well, in all my time at this theater, I have never seen the great Charles Hart come out from behind the vaunted curtain, and certainly never as directly for an orange from one of you.”

  “Maybe he was hungry,” she smiled slyly. “I wouldn’t make too much of it.”

  “And I would not discount it, lovely Nell.” He drew up her hand and, for the first time since she had met him, his expression became serious. “Take care with Mr. Hart, Nell. He can be a dangerous man.”

  “He seemed perfectly charmin’ to me.”

  “He’s an actor, the finest one in London. Boasts to everyone that he is a grandnephew of William Shakespeare. Mark me, he sought you out for something more than a piece of fruit.”

  “If you’re right,” she laughed, “we have only to wait and see what that is.”

  Before she left the theater that afternoon, Nell received a message, brought by the girl, still in rouge and lip paint, who had delivered the epilogue. It was from Charles Hart. Nell read the brief words with difficulty; she could barely read, and could not write at all. Still, the message was clear. Mr. Hart wished her to join him in his private tiring-room.

  There wa
s something he wished to ask her.

  The king sat at the head of a long, polished table, with the Duke of Buckingham. The Earl of Arlington, who Buckingham openly despised, sat across from him, fingering a silver snuffbox. Thomas Clifford, Buckingham’s new protégé, slouched, while John Maitland, the barrel-chested Scottish Duke of Lauderdale, whispered to the Duke of York at the table’s other end.

  As England’s Lord High Admiral, it was the King’s brother, James, Duke of York, who was spearheading a new effort to locate revenue for England. All of the councillors, with the exception of the gout-ridden, cantankerous lord chancellor, the Earl of Clarendon, were young and enthusiastic for the continuation of the yearlong war with the Dutch. In spite of the enormous cost of sea battles, the potential in victory was too seductive to be denied. “We simply haven’t enough money to continue on! It takes money to make war! We have barely enough to man our harbors as it is!” Clarendon declared, slamming a liver-spotted hand onto the polished oak table. The earl was alone against the younger council members. Their sighs and rolled eyes were a reminder to the king of that.

  “The Dutch have wealth beyond the needs of three countries,” argued Buckingham.

  “That has never meant it is ours for the taking!”

  Clarendon was a stubborn old man, with a shock of snowy hair and a rugged, somber face. He was tolerated, not only because his daughter was married to the king’s brother, but because he had been a great supporter of Charles’s father. But the times were slowly shifting.

  “It will be ours if we are victorious,” Clifford observed in support of Buckingham.

  The Duke of York leaned back in his chair and put a hand on his chin. “There is another way.”

  Arlington rolled his eyes. He, like the others, knew what would come next. The views of the king’s secretly Catholic brother were well known to this intimate council. An alliance with Catholic France was his standard proposal. Accepting money from the French would mean an end to the Dutch hostilities, and a respectable sum for England in the bargain.

  “Your Majesty could still accept Louis XIV’s generous terms. Then the Dutch would become inconsequential. After all, why have you sold our sister to his brother, if not ultimately for a treaty with France?”

  “Keep Minette out of it,” Charles interjected, stiffening. “We are talking about war.”

  “The terms with France are still too high,” Buckingham put in. “If there were even a hint that His Majesty meant to convert England to a Catholic country, there would be anarchy the likes we have not known since—” He bit off his words, but the reference lay raw still between men who had survived the dark days of Oliver Cromwell, watched a king’s murder, and had worked for the Restoration of his son, who now reigned.

  “Since my father was brutally butchered right outside these walls, you meant to say? His death will not be in vain, by God! I will rule as he ruled, bravely and boldly!”

  “The country is glad to have Your Majesty,” Arlington amended, purposely seconding Buckingham. “We rejoiced openly in your Restoration. But England is a staunchly Protestant country.”

  “I have it on sound authority that not everyone is so staunch,” James said quietly.

  “This is taking us too far afield from the point,” Buckingham interjected. “England requires money, and ahead lies two distinct paths toward realizing that. One will require continued sacrifice at sea, but earn great wealth in our certain victory. The other, while asking less sacrifice, calls for an intolerable spiritual compromise.”

  “And a dangerous deception to my subjects,” the king added. “We need a sound victory if we are ever to rebuild London.”

  “Mark me,” said Clarendon. “You shall all rue the day that you continued on with this.”

  The king looked at Clarendon, his father’s trusted adviser, trying to recall what he had seen as worthy in the advice of a fearful old man. His gaze then slid to Buckingham and Clifford.

  “We need money. The Dutch have more than enough,” decreed the king. “Any treaty with France contains the provision that I declare myself a converted Catholic king. And, at the moment, that is a price even I am not willing to pay.”

  “Why not make Louis a counterproposal?” offered James. “Protect our harbors from attack, then wait and see.”

  Clarendon stood, then hunched over, his knuckles meeting the oak table. “You know perfectly well we cannot afford the cost of manning docked ships! The city cries for rebuilding, and there are still the effects of the last plague with which to be reckoned. It would be a foolish waste of money, Your Majesty, one which your father, the king, would never have allowed!”

  The king settled his eyes first on the broad-shouldered Clarendon, then on his brother. “At least we must man our unused ships that are still in the harbor. Keep them at the ready. As they are, we are vulnerable should the Dutch decide to retaliate.”

  “Keeping them at the ready will cost more than we have,” Clarendon grumbled. “You must propose a truce with the Dutch and put an end to all of this, no matter our circumstance, if you have a prayer of rebuilding London!”

  “James, are you prepared to continue on as Lord High Admiral, leading us at sea in spite of our difference of opinion on this?”

  “My duty is to serve my king.”

  Charles arched a brow. “And your duty to your God?”

  “I shall pray that the will of one shall follow the path of the other.”

  “And George, what of England if the prayer goes unanswered?” asked the king.

  “Then we are all doomed, a devastation throughout the world the likes we have never seen before.” Buckingham’s glance slid from one privy councillor to the next. “But, of course, that will not happen.”

  The king’s gaze followed Buckingham’s. The silence stretched out for what felt an eternity. “My father trusted you implicitly, and I am prepared to trust you, Clarendon,” he finally said. “For the time being, until the French respond to our counterproposal, we take no further aggression toward the Dutch, and we will patrol our harbors but keep the ships unmanned so that we can begin to help the people build shelter.”

  “Rob Peter to pay Paul?” said Lauderdale beneath his breath.

  “Mark me, it will be a grievous mistake,” said Buckingham, who turned his head and gave a little grunt of disapproval which no one but the king heard.

  He was propped by a spray of tasseled velvet pillows, in his tall poster bed, with a massive tester behind it. At his feet, and near the fire, was a collection of his beloved spaniels, dozing. The girl would be quietly brought to him, like all of the others, by William Chiffinch, the keeper of His Majesty’s privy closet. Afterward, she would be led away. Like the same tune played too many times, the melody now was gratingly predictable. There was no love in the act, nor any longer even the wild excitement of anticipation. Other than what he felt for his children, and he loved them all deeply, there was no love in his life, no passionate love, any longer. Though he had all of the richness and grandeur that had eluded him in his poverty-ridden exile, his heart was a more difficult void to fill. The harder he searched for someone he could love, the more he found women seduced by the trappings of royalty. Hortense Mancini was first to make an impression on his heart, Lucy Walter was first to make an impression in his life; she was Monmouth’s mother. Then Barbara. Moll Davies. It had become a game to him, to see how long it might take to uncover an honest heart. Catherine loved him. Why, the Portuguese ambassador queried, did a lonely king not pay greater heed to that? Charles did care for her. He enjoyed her company. He even trusted her judgment. But to Catherine, duty was love—he was her duty, not a great passion. They had married, sight unseen. Yet still, even after four years, she was rigid with him. Beyond the necessary encounters to, God willing, produce an heir, there was no playfulness, scant show of affection, and unrelenting prayers every time immediately afterward.

  The decision about war with the Dutch plagued him almost as much as his private life. Continuin
g on with aggression could prove a dangerous mistake. Like infidelity. Charles remembered well what had happened the last time. Common sense gave way to English avarice. Hundreds slaughtered at sea. A devastating cost. A humiliating defeat. There was a soft rap at the door, and thoughts of war vanished into a light swirl of juniper perfume.

  An hour after she had gone, Charles could remember nothing about the girl.

  Unable to sleep, he rose, and drew on a brocade dressing gown. He went toward a ring of moonlight cast through the grand Elizabethan oriel window, which looked onto his own formal gardens. Here, protected on all sides by Whitehall Palace, he could almost make believe he lived a quiet life in the country where everything beyond the palace walls was clean and safe. Yet, in spite of the danger, Charles was often drawn beyond his protective cocoon. He loved to be anonymous, to slip in and out of the world of which he could never truly be a part. The ordinary world. It was why he went into London so often without his wig and his finery. While there had been hunger and fear in his impoverished exile years, Charles had found a kinship with common people that had changed him forever. He opened the window and a cool rush of night air washed over him, reviving him. Ghosts…so many ghosts at night…

  “Stop! No, I’ll not listen!”

  “You will listen, Charles! They’ve cut off his head, and you are king of England now! You will survive, and one day you will return to England to rule!”

  Charles squeezed his eyes and let the cool night air dry the sheen of perspiration on his face and chest. The ghosts faded. He shivered. Though she had remained exiled in France for nine years, the sound of his mother’s determined voice was as clear in his mind now as it had been that day. That moment would forever haunt him, knowing the savagery of Cromwell’s men. God, the images that came when he lay his head on the pillow! He squeezed his eyes against the image of a river of blood. He could almost hear the thump of his father’s severed head landing in the wicker basket beside the stump. The place it happened was here, outside these very castle walls. Now, as he often did, when he could not drink enough to find a bit of peace, he drew on a long leather coat, trousers, soft boots, and a wide-brimmed hat, and went alone down the same back stairs on which the girl had been brought to him. Alone, he walked into the freedom of morning’s earliest hour, when the fog rolled and swirled at his ankles, obscuring him. He lowered his hat and passed a guard sleeping on duty, slumped in a chair, lightly snoring. Charles knew the soldier should be punished, but, in this case, the boy had done him a favor. He moved quietly through a narrow corridor, lit by candles in wall sconces, then down a flight of stairs to the outer courtyard that faced the Thames. There, by Charles’s order, the block remained, still starkly stained with his father’s blood. “So I might never forget,” he once told his brother.